Saw the surgeon today

Will be going in at 11 tomorrow to have the ruptured bicep repaired.

The next book will probably be a little bit delayed. But I should be able to type once I get the bandages off and put into a brace.

Total recover will be like FIVE months :-P But the brace should come off after about two. The biggest problem will be remembering I can't use my arm for anything requiring strength until like November.

The Dragon Award Nominations are almost done

Here's the link: Dragon Awards

This is a fan award where anyone can vote, and it's probably the best indication of what people are reading. I'd love to win something like this, but there isn't a category I could compete in - Fantasy is where the Valens Legacy would go, but there's no way I could compete against a straight up fantasy novel. The top tier ones of those have hundreds of thousands of fans.

So, if you can, please vote. If you vote for me, thanks for the sentiment, but I won't be hurt if you decide to vote for someone with an actual chance of winning :-)

The arm needs surgery

Just a brief update. Doctor says I need surgery. The particular type he doesn't do very often so he's sending me to another surgeon who performs it regularly. Hopefully I'll see them early next week and we can get this scheduled. It isn't cheap, and I won't be able to use my left arm for anything for about two months. Maybe longer.

Yeah, this has been an interesting year so far.

Thinking of raising my prices

I'm thinking of raising my prices. Going to $3.99 was a pretty big move for me when I did it.  When I priced the Valens Legacy series at $3.99 I was worried about it. There are people out there who literally write me hate mail and hate reviews because I 'charge too much' at $3.99.

But I found that even the guy who copied me is charging $4.99.

Think about that. He's charging more than I am. Hell, damn near everybody is now charging more than I am, and I'm supposed to be one of the top authors in the field? *shakes head* Yeah, I don't think I'm gonna go raising the prices on anything that's already out there. But I'm seriously thinking about raising prices to $4.99 on everything I write from this point forward.

Oh, and I've checked page counts. Yeah, some are writing longer books (about 10 to 15 percent longer). But a lot of them are writing the same length. Or less.

Weigh in below...

So umm, guess what? About that guy.... ;-)

So yeah, that guy who wrote a book that seems very suspiciously like mine? Who then claimed NOT to be that guy who did it to me last time?

Yeah... Right... At this point I'm 99.9 percent certain that it's the same guy. That he just came back at me AGAIN, just a little more carefully this time. So based on that, his claim not to have even known who I was until his book was done is quite bogus.

It also means that he has even less of a chance at winning a lawsuit. I think it would put his chances into actual negative numbers.  (before they were simply 0)

Now yeah, there is a very very very very very small chance that this is someone else, so I'm not going to claim it as a legal fact, but in my personal opinion, it's him. Why he is obsessed with me, especially after the spanking he got last time, is beyond me. If he'd been a man, when he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, he would have at least owed up to it. But instead, he immediately started jumping up and down and screaming that he didn't take those cookies, while the chocolate was still smeared all over his face.

All I ever did was said I was annoyed by it. I never once made any threats, legal or otherwise. I never even told anyone to give him bad reviews or engage in any other improper behavior. Most of the bad reviews predated my even posting about it. I even specifically told folks that if they wanted to read it, I didn't care, and if they enjoyed it, I didn't mind. I don't think I have the right to tell you, my readers and my fans, what you should like and shouldn't like. Not my business. My business is to try and provide you with a quality story that you will enjoy.

I have some thoughts on all of this, that I think I may address in later posts. They're not about this guy, which is why I will post them separately. But they are about some lessons I've learned in life that I think folks may benefit from.

Thanks all of you for reading me, and thanks all of you who told me about this guy. Several more people have written in private with more tidbits that I've found interesting. Again, thank you.

Okay, he claims he's not that guy

So I got a nasty email tonight from the author wherein he claims that he is not the person who I dealt with last time. He then went and threatened to sue me if I don't take down my posts about the book and all that. Seems he thinks I told people to one-star him.

I never told anyone here to one-star him. Why? I don't want to get in a shit flinging contest with him over this. If you like the book, fine, you like the book. As I said before, if you want to read it, I don't care.

But there really isn't anything he can say that will make me believe that he didn't rip me off, idea-wise and plot-wise. Oh, I don't think I can sue him for what he did, I'm fairly certain he steered well clear of anything actionable. As for me, guess I'll be calling my lawyers in the morning and telling them I'm gonna be sued.

edit: I removed his name, not because I'm worried about being sued, he has no case. But because I don't want to drive ANY traffic to him.

Yeah that guy is back again...

One of the ways you know that you're successful, I guess, is that everyone wants to rip you off. The guy that tried that last time is back, under a new pen name, and thankfully this time he at least changed enough stuff that I can't take legal action (I hate having to do that, honestly).

But I sort of feel sorry for the guy. Now I know to a lot of you it might seem kind of strange that I feel sorry for a guy who is ripping me off, but as I read through the book I realized that here is this guy who wants to be a writer, and he hasn't got the slightest bit of creativity in him. 

None. Nada. Zilch. He -has- to rip off other people's ideas because he can -not- come up with them on his own. He took stuff out of my story (again, not enough to sue over I'm sure, but still obvious) that he had no understanding of why it was there, and it shows that he really has no idea at all what he's doing. He's just copying and trying to change enough not to get sued.

When I started reading it, I kinda hoped it would hare off into its own thing, with his own take on stuff, but except for the sex scenes, it very much stuck to the general plan of my story. He passed up so many chances to do things differently, which tells me that he has no idea what he's doing, he has no creative spark, no art in his soul, nothing.

Yes, he'll put out a bunch of books like mine, they'll probably sell a bunch because the market is always hungry for more, and then he'll either look for someone else to copy or the fans will realize he's just mailing it in and ripping it all off from other people. Which is probably why he uses pen names and won't write under his own name, in the hope that his reputation won't catch up with him.
But really. It's just sad.